Express-News website wins three national awards

The front of the San Anotnio Express-News building at the corner of Avenue E and 3rd Street is seen Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015. The newspaper is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2015.

The front of the San Anotnio Express-News building at the corner of...

The San Antonio Express-News website, ExpressNews.com, won three awards this week in a national Editor & Publisher competition, taking the EPPY Award for Best News Website with a maximum of 1 million unique visitors per month for the second year in a row.

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“It’s great that the hard work of the ExpressNews.com team and the paper as a whole is being recognized on a national level,” said Graham Watson-Ringo, the website’s executive producer. “We will continue to strive to produce and showcase the top-notch journalism that serves the San Antonio community and surrounding areas.”

Among websites in the same traffic category, ExpressNews.com also won Best Business Reporting and tied for Best Investigative/Enterprise Feature.

“The Express-News is committed to ambitious and comprehensive original reporting,” Managing Editor Jamie Stockwell said. “These awards recognize our daily promise to readers and highlight some of our more innovative and engaging digital storytelling, from the overall engagement of our subscriber site to our multipart series about transgender Texans whose rights were debated by legislators this past spring. We’re proud of the work we do and are honored to be recognized nationally.”

The series that tied for the best enterprise feature, “Life in Transition,” was written by Express-News staff writer Lauren Caruba, with photos and videos by former Express-News photographer Carolyn Van Houten. Data Editor Luke Whyte designed the webpage for the series, which documented the transitions and challenges facing transgender San Antonians. Whyte also wrote code and built animated images for the project.

Katherine Blunt, then a transportation reporter at the Express-News, wrote “The End of the Road,” the story that won the award for best business reporting. Blunt examined the SH 130 Concession Co., which built and operated the southern section of the Texas 130 toll road and ended up in bankruptcy after the high-debt project failed to meet traffic projections. Blunt’s in-depth report showed the pitfalls of privatized infrastructure and included video and audio elements, interactive graphics and embedded documents.

Media leaders judged more than 300 entries to pick winners in 30 categories for professional media websites.